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Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb sends a ball to the plate in the ninth inning against the Cleveland Indians in Cleveland, Ohio on Sept. 2, 1990. Stieb pitched a no-hitter against the Indians, winning the game 3-0. (TONY DEJAK / The Associated Press file photo)

Dave Stieb threw the Blue Jays only no-hitter 25 years ago on Sept. 2, 1990. This is the Toronto Star's sports front page for the day.

“What I was saying was, this is perfect for me. This is the closest we’re getting.”

Tomorrow never came.

On that sunny Sunday afternoon a quarter century ago, Stieb wasn’t perfect. He’d walked four Indians, including the second-last batter, Alex Cole, on four straight pitches. “I just couldn’t throw a strike.” Then Jerry Browne jumped at a 1-0 breaking ball, CRACK, and was out before he got to first base.

Imperfect. But star-crossed Dave Stieb — thrice before thwarted with two out in the ninth — finally had his no-hitter.

His Blue Jays teammates stampeded towards the mound, lifted Stieb and carried him on their shoulders. Hail hero.

It remains the only no-hit game for the Jays in franchise history.

“Nice to have the only one,” a reminiscing Stieb tells the Star, in understatement. “I think about that often. Especially nowadays with all the no-hitters being thrown or almost no-hitters.”

Stieb had been the stricken paragon of almost no-hitters.

Aug. 24, 1985, Comiskey Park: Bottom of the ninth, first batter Stieb faces, Rudy Law, breaks up the no-hit bid by smoking the first pitch he sees over the right-field fence. (For good measure, the next hitter also goes yard.) “My arm was hurting. The only reason I was out there was because I had the no-hitter going. But when I threw those 10 last pitches, it was like throwing BP. I had nothing.”

Sept. 24, 1988, Cleveland: Two out in the ninth and Julio Franco at the plate. He fouls off three pitches on a 1-2 count, takes ball two, then slaps a routine chopper ball that takes a godawful second hop right in front of Manny Lee at second base and skitters for a single.

Sept. 30, 1988, Exhibition Stadium: In Stieb’s next start, six days later, Baltimore’s Jim Traber flares a two-out hit curveball — “my third-best pitch instead of going to a fastball’’ over first baseman Fred McGriff’s glove into right. No no-no.

Aug. 4, 1989, SkyDome: Stieb is perfect through 8 2/3 innings, 26-up, 26 down, striking out 11. Two Yankee pinch-hitters go down swinging on nine pitches. That brings centre fielder Roberto Kelly to the dish. And — because this has become the story of Stieb’s life — he lines a sharp double to left. Afterwards, Stieb — called Cy by his ’mates, as in Cy Young (the eponymous award he’ll never win) — says, sighs, “If I haven’t gotten a no-hitter after three times, I doubt if I ever will.”

Three scotched 2-out-in-the-ninth, no-hit flirtations can break a guy’s heart.

Except not that Labour Day weekend, in a game where Stieb didn’t even have his best stuff, couldn’t find his release point in the early innings, hung pitches the Tribe hitters missed or fouled off. But 123 pitches later — 75 strikes — the deed was done.

Dave Stieb threw the Blue Jays only no-hitter 25 years ago on Sept. 2, 1990. This is the Toronto Star's sports front page for the day.

“Relief and disbelief. Those are the two things I felt. Then the celebration ensued and it sank in. Wow, it really did happen. It felt good to get that off my back. I was thinking, now I don’t have to concern myself with everybody wishing me a no-hitter.”

That was the albatross around his neck, of course, the almost synonymous with Stieb, a moundsman so masterly — his 140 Ws in the ’80s second only to Jack Morris — that he should have had a bagful of ’em. In 408 Toronto starts, a mind-boggling 103 complete games, 30 shutouts. Five one-hit games in his career.

And yes, it rankles still, though he’s hard-pressed to pick one out of the lot as most dejecting.

“They’re all hard to accept. The first one probably, the bad hop. How do you get over that? You have to but you think about it a lot. Like, why did that happen? How did they hit that one spot and take that ferocious bounce, straight up in the air over Manny Lee’s head? It’s something that I run through my head a lot just picturing that hope and wondering how the heck that happened.

“It was a routine ground ball. I told myself as the ball went to my left towards Manny, I though, I got this no-hitter, I got a no-hitter. And that bounce happened and I’m, no I don’t. And now I’ve got a game. It was 1-0. It was crazy.”

Fate or destiny, Stieb can’t figure it.

“It’s kind of weird that, two years later in that same ball park, I get it.’’

This conversation is supposed to be about the no-hit game that was. But Stieb keeps returning to those that weren’t, picking at the scabs. And two no-hitters up in smoke inside of a week — the gods of baseball must have been toying with him.

“To have the next game happen with a blooper over McGriff’s glove, back to back like that, it was pretty hard to take. To come that close to a feat that not many get to accomplish, you scratch your head and wonder why.

“And then the perfect game, that’s a whole other thing. For me, a game going that far, I usually walk somebody. So it was amazing to get that far and then the first pitch was like half an inch or so inside and the umpire calls it a ball. How do you call that a ball? I haven’t walked anybody, I’ve got 11 strikeouts and you’re calling that a ball in a perfect game, the last hitter?”

Utterly disheartening he says.

“The next one was inside. I’m like, okay, here I go. I’m not going to walk him. Then I threw him a pretty good slider and he hit a bullet and that was that.

“But the just reward was I finally got one. At least I don’t go through life only talking about the almost no-hitters.”

That day when the stars aligned in Cleveland, Stieb admits he was thinking no-hitter from about the sixth inning. “You’ve still got a long way to go and, as I’ve proven, it’s a long way to go even with two out and one strike left.”

In the dugout, as per tradition, no one said a word. “Nothing happened on the bench. Nothing. Nobody would sit by me. Nobody was talking to me. Everybody just stays away from you because they don’t want to jinx it or something.”

There was an air-show going on overhead. Stieb remembers the noise. But mostly he was in his own little bubble.

“I felt an urgency to hurry up and pitch and get done with it. I just felt anxious and wanted to get it over with.”

On the last out:

“It was a crappy slider to Browne and he’s a little guy so I got away with it. He’s not a home run hitter. It wasn’t that good a pitch, just a slider for a strike, a little bit up. He hit it good but right at Junior Felix. Not one time did I go after him with a fastball.”

That’s his only regret, about all the almosts, relying too much on his money-pitch nasty slider.

“Now I see these guys throwing no-hitters, last hitters striking them out with fastballs. I believe if I’d have thrown fastballs I’d have had three no-hitters for sure.”

So why reach for that slider again and again? “Because I’m stubborn. I felt I needed to throw something that was moving. Just fell in love with that slider, over-exposed it.”

That’s the perfectionist speaking.

Subsequently, the only time Stieb was in the vicinity of a no-hitter again it was with a then-rookie Roy Halladay on the hill, two outs in the ninth, last day of the 1998 season. Detroit’s Bobby Higginson jacked a 379-foot blast out of the park at SkyDome. Stieb, attempting a comeback at 40 years of age, was part of Toronto’s relief cadre.

“I was in the bullpen. The ball hit off the back wall and I caught it. It was really weird thinking, man, I’m holding the ball that keeps me on the no-hit club with the Blue Jays by myself.

“I got rid of it.”

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